A BLOG FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

​What's a fair price for proofreading or editing?One of my concerns when discussing rates is that the value of a particular client to the freelance editor or proofreader’s business is sometimes overlooked.

​Deciding not to accept a particular editing rate might be the right choice for me but the wrong choice for you, or vice versa. That’s because our circumstances are different and because businesses aren’t static.

​Terms such as ‘too low’ or ‘race to the bottom’ can be problematic because they’re used as if editorial business ownership is taking place in the now – as if the business, and the fees which that business owner accepts, are absolutes and somehow unrelated to what’s gone before or what will happen in the future.

I believe that business ownership is a journey – that the work I do, and the marketing I carry out to acquire that work, is fluid. The decisions I made and the actions I took three years ago affected the work I was doing and the fees I was charging/accepting at that time; but they ALSO affected the work I’m doing and the fees I’m charging/accepting now.

This fluidity means that the way we find value in a client extends beyond the rate.

Time for a case study to nail things down …

Case study: The packager and the proofreader2012
Ellie’s a proofreader.

Work: She’s completed her training and become a member of her national editorial society. She’s technically excellent at her job, but she has no clients and very little experience of paid work.

Marketing: She has a website but the portfolio and testimonials pages are sparse. And, anyway, her SEO is, as yet, so undeveloped that she’s barely discoverable online. She gets in touch with a packager who regularly hires proofreaders who are members of her national professional society.

Clients: To the packager, she’s a great fit. She has the skills they want and she has the space in her schedule. To academics, students, businesses and independent authors searching for a proofreader, she’s invisible. Even if she were visible, she appears less experienced (less interesting, we might say) than other proofreaders touting their services.

Rates: The agency offers regular work, and the rate is £13.50 per hour. ‘That rate is woeful,’ says one of the more experienced colleagues in her network. ‘That’s so low it’s an insult,’ says another. ‘Accepting that is encouraging a race to the bottom,’ says yet another.

Action: Ellie accepts the work anyway – she has a cunning plan!

2014
Ellie’s still a proofreader.

Work: In the past two years, she’s done a book a month for that packager. Now, from that packager alone, she has 24 academic book titles in her portfolio – all of them published by international scholarly publishers, and some of them authored by big names in the academic community. She’s also contacted several academic presses whose rates are a little higher than the packager’s, but only by a few pounds.

Marketing: She’s been busy over the past two years.

She published a smart portfolio on her website. Each of those titles, with their corresponding authors, contains rich keywords that in the longer term will make her website more discoverable to academics searching for editorial assistance in a particular field.

She contacted several academic publishers (who don’t use the packager). They were impressed by her training and her experience – those 24 academic titles match their own publishing lists. They added her to their editorial freelancing lists and she now receives work from each of them every few months. Over the course of two years, she’s been able to add a further 27 titles to her portfolio.

She requested testimonials from the packager and the publishers.

She counted up her hours of experience, noted her professional training, and asked her referees if they’d support her application to upgrade her professional society membership. They said, ‘Of course!’ In two months’ time, she’ll meet the criteria to upgrade to a level of membership that entitles her to advertise in her professional society’s online directory – that’s more visibility. The directory enables her to link to her website – a superb SEO opportunity.

She developed a number of value-adding tools for her website (checklists, advice, guidance, etc.). They’re targeted at clients to whom she’d like to be more visible in the future and with whom she’ll be able to command higher rates than she’s earning from the publishers and packager. She regularly shares this information using her social media platforms and professional networks – more SEO benefits, more visibility.

Clients: Two years ago, Ellie wasn’t discoverable to anyone but the packager and the publishers. Things have changed, though. It’s been a slow burn, but her down-the-road thinking has led to a larger number of direct hits on her website. There’s still a long way to go, but when clients visit her website now, they see the following:

Experience – her portfolio page lists 51 books

Trustworthiness – the pithy quotes from big-name presses inspire the viewer’s confidence in her ability

Rates: A few of the clients who’ve found her direct have accepted the rates she offered. These are sometimes as much as double the rate she’s earning from the publishers and packager. This inspires her to continue her marketing activities and increase her visibility to these client types so that she might shift her customer base as her business develops.
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Ellie’s still not visible enough to fill her schedule with these better-paying clients. She continues to accept work from the publishers and the packagers. ‘Those rates are an insult to someone with your experience,’ cry some of her colleagues.

Action: Ellie accepts the work anyway – she’s not phasing out the publishers and the packager until she’s phased in enough higher-paying clients to replace the workflow and the income it provides.

2016
Ellie’s still a proofreader.

Work: Over the past two years, she gradually reduced the work for the packager, finally stopping it altogether at the end of 2015. She’s still taking some work from her early publisher clients, though much less than in 2012–14. That’s because she’s been working for four better-paying presses whose rates are what she’d define as ‘middle-of-the-road’, though nowhere near as high as the fees she can set when she works directly for authors and students.

Her increasing visibility has put her in a position where she receives several direct requests to quote per week. She’s noticed that some academic publishers are even asking their authors to source and pay for their own proofreading, so she’s glad she’s focused on making herself discoverable to these clients.

Marketing: Even though Ellie’s had a full schedule for several years, she’s continued to focus on what she wants down the road in terms of client types and income. The bread-and-butter work provided by the publishers and the packager have enabled her to concentrate large chunks of her marketing time on what she wants in the future without having to worry excessively about where today’s work will come from.

Her portfolio is impressive. She’s added each new title and author to the page when she’s completed a project. That’s more rich keywords, plus her website is continually benefiting from having fresh content added (good for SEO).

She’s advertised in several paid-for directories to increase her discoverability to businesses, students and independent academics.

Her content marketing has continued – she’s added more resources that she believes will be of interest to her target clients.

She’s upgraded her professional society membership status. Now her profile is visible via the organization’s website, which links to her own site. That’s more inbound/outbound links for her website, which is great SEO.

She’s attended various workshops and conferences, and continues to network online. This relationship building has led to several referrals of work from colleagues whose own schedules were too full.

Clients: Ellie appears to clients as an experienced proofreader with professional qualifications. They think she’s on their wavelength because of the valuable resources she provides for free. The fact that she’s worked for international academic publishing houses gives them confidence that she knows how to follow a brief and work on complex materials to a high standard. If she wasn’t capable, those presses wouldn’t have hired her repeatedly, would they?

Rates: Ellie no longer accepts work below £20 per hour, although she aims to earn an average hourly rate of £28. She can afford to make this decision because of the balance between her later-acquired, medium-paying publisher clients (who provide her with a stable workflow) and the higher-paying independent clients who contact her direct.

On an online forum, a new entrant to the field posts that she’s been offered proofreading work from a packager at a rate of £15 an hour. Does Ellie say, ‘That rate’s woeful. It’s an insult. Accepting it would be encouraging a race to the bottom’? Nope. She says, ‘Is there value in this work beyond the fee being offered?’ She goes further:

Is the minimum you need to earn £15 or below? If it is …

Will accepting work from that packager provide you with regular work so that you don’t have to spend as much time finding clients now?

Because the packager is doing some of your project-acquisition on your behalf now, how much time will this free up for you to do marketing that will help you find better-paying clients later?

Will accepting work from that packager provide you with projects that you can list on your website, thus providing rich keyword search terms that will make you visible to better-paying clients now and later?

Will the work from that packager provide you with experience that you can sell on to better-paying clients now and later?

The business journey
Ellie’s business in 2012 looks different to Ellie’s business in 2016. Her client base has shifted, her income has shifted, the base price she’ll accept has shifted, her work stream has shifted and her visibility has shifted.

It’s not just that the decisions she made in 2016 are different to those she made in 2012. Rather, the decisions she made in 2016 are founded on those she made in 2012.

If she’d decided in 2012 that she wanted 2016’s offerings at the start of her career, she’d have struggled.

It’s not that she wasn’t worth £X per hour back in 2012, but that she wasn’t in a position to be discoverable (or perhaps attractive) to those clients who were prepared to pay that price.

Because she took a down-the-road approach – one that viewed her business as something that was moveable, something that could develop, grow and change – she was able to see opportunity and value in what was on offer back then.

There is value beyond the rate. Whether you take advantage of that value will depend on your particular circumstances, of course.

​My advice to new starters is to be cautious when listening to the rates debate. It’s easy for seasoned professional editorial freelancers to advise against accepting this or that fee simply because they’re in a position to command better fees.

​In fact, offering advice on what’s an acceptable price is almost impossible unless we understand an individual freelancer’s circumstances, requirements and access points to the industry.

Fees, like any other aspect of a business, need to be considered in the context of an overall business plan, and over a time frame that extends beyond the now.

In this article, I consider several approaches to increasing editing income and declining lower-paid work. These respect editors' differing circumstances, client bases and business goals.

How to increase editing and proofreading incomeTaking annual action to increase income from freelance editorial work is simply good business practice.

​Earnings need to keep up with cost-of-living increases else our editorial businesses could fail. Even if they don't fail, the decline in profitability could have a significant impact on our lifestyle and well-being.

What we earn is determined by the following:​​

The fee we consent to when we’re in the position of being made an offer (from, say, a publisher, packager or agency). Here, we’re price-accepters.

The fee we charge when we’re in the position of making an offer (to, say, an independent author, student or business). Here, we’re price-setters.

Increasing our earnings is not always straightforward, though. You or I might think our desired rate increase is entirely justified (for example, because of inflation). However, what you or I think is not the issue. Any change to a pricing model must consider the client’s response for the simple reason that the client might not be prepared to pay. Remember:

When we’re price-setters, we’re within our rights to increase our fees. On the flip side, our clients are within their rights to decline the new price and walk away.

When we’re price-accepters, our clients are within their rights to maintain their current fees (or even decrease them), while we’re within our rights to negotiate or decline the work and walk away.

Decisions about what to set or accept therefore need to be carefully planned.

Avoiding knee-jerk thinking
If a colleague states that they’ve decided to no longer edit for ‘low’ rates, by all means congratulate them on their business decision. Don’t assume, though, that their decision is the same one you should be making.

Before you impulsively follow their lead, ask yourself the following questions:

What do they mean by ‘low’ rates? Is your definition of ‘low’ the same as theirs? You may think £25 an hour for editing is great but your colleague may think it’s unacceptable.

Do they have a supporting income that enables them to implement their decision immediately with no harm to their lifestyle? Perhaps they have a partner who is the primary breadwinner, or maybe they’re lucky enough to have an independent income from a generous trust fund (we can all dream!). Put another way, your colleague might be able to afford to immediately decline £25 per hour on principle, whereas you’re responsible for all your monthly outgoings and aren’t in a position to bear the risk of earning zero pounds per hour until you have acquired a replacement client.

Do they have a large and established client base in a sector that is known to be less price-sensitive than the sectors you work in? Perhaps their knowledge and specialist skills put them in the rare position of being able to name their price. You, on the other hand, might work in a more competitive generalist market where you’re easy to replace.

Is their visibility so high that they’re confident they can replace lost clients with new customers who’ll pay their desired prices? Their marketing strategy is mature, whereas you’re still building your visibility and juggling feast and famine.

In other words, don’t feel compelled to decline work just because your colleagues deem what’s on offer as a bum deal. Their current circumstances might be very different from yours.

​Not everyone can afford to be unemployed, and the choices available to a mature freelance-business owner may be very different from those on offer to the beginner.

Case study – the price-accepter
When you’re a price-accepter, the process for managing rates is usually one of the following:

The flat refusal: the client offers work at a price you deem too low. You decline and walk away. Either you’ve acquired a better-paying replacement or you now have a gap in your schedule and are earning less.

The negotiation: the client offers work at a price you deem too low. You negotiate. The outcome could be the rate you want, a rate that’s in the middle ground and that will do until you have alternative work lined up, or a no-budge. If you get the rate you want, great. If you end up in the middle ground or with a no-budge, you’ll have to decide whether to walk away or move to phase-out mode.

The phase-out: the client offers work at a price you deem too low. You accept the fee but commit to find a better-paying replacement, at which point you’ll phase out this customer.

In the first five years of owning my editorial business, I was almost exclusively a price-accepter. My main clients were publishers and packagers. Returning to the knee-jerk-avoidance issues:

I didn’t think in terms of ‘low’ and ‘high’. I thought in terms of experience, testimonials and portfolio generation, all of which I believed would make me more interesting and discoverable further down the line. Price comparisons were interesting but nothing more. They didn’t determine whether I accepted or declined work.

During this period, my partner earned 60% more than me. We relied on his salary to live – food, mortgage, bills, clothes. My earnings paid for the nice stuff.

I was completely replaceable in the eyes of my publisher and packager clients. They knew exactly where to go to find equally experienced editorial pros if I declined to work for them.

My marketing strategy was growing, but I wasn’t so visible that I could decline work from a publisher, safe in the knowledge that the gap in my schedule would be filled with a better-paying client. Saying no meant risking earning zero pounds per hour, which in turn meant less nice stuff!

During that phase, I was a negotiator and a phase-outer. I’d take the work to ensure a full schedule. I gained experience and testimonials, and I expanded my portfolio – all great marketing tools. As I acquired better-paying clients, I phased out the 15-pounder, then the 18-pounder, then the 20-pounder, and so on. It was a gradual process.
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In 2017, my marketing strategy has paid off. I’m highly visible. I’ve got the experience, the testimonials and the portfolio to make me interesting to enough non-publisher clients that I can decline a price and walk away. I’ve moved from negotiation and phasing-out to responding with a flat refusal.

Case study – the price-setter
When you’re a price-setter, the process for managing rates is usually one of the following:

The flat increase: you offer the client a price. If they accept, you do the work. If they decline, you walk. You’re confident you can fill the gap in your schedule, but if you can’t it doesn’t matter because of your particular financial circumstances.

The negotiation: you offer the client a price. The client wants to work with you but tries to bring the fee down. If you need to fill the space in your schedule and aren’t confident that you’ll acquire a replacement, you’ll negotiate. The outcome could be a rate you’re still more than happy with, a rate that’s in the middle ground and that will do until you have alternative work lined up, or a no-budge. If you get the rate you want, great. If you end up in the middle ground or with a no-budge, you’ll have to decide whether to walk away or buckle.

The phase-in: this is an approach that my colleague Janet MacMillan wisely suggests using for established clients. The fee increase is staggered so that the client has time to adjust. It can be presented as an extended discount that respects the pre-existing relationship. The client views it as valuable because they’re getting a special benefit.

In the first five years of owning my editorial business, I had few clients for whom I set the price, and I was still developing my visibility. If there was space in my schedule, I’d try to fill it by negotiating and offering phased-in fee increases for regular clients.

In 2017, things have changed. I’m a flat-increaser. If the client doesn’t like the fee on offer, no problem. I thank them for their interest and wish them luck. Returning to the knee-jerk-avoidance issues:

My services are particular to my business. The definitions of service provision were created by me and may or may not mirror my colleagues’ services. ‘Low’ and ‘high’ therefore don’t mean much to anyone other than me and my client.

I still have a partner with a backup income.

The replaceability issue is tricky. I have a couple of business clients for whom price is not the issue. However, the work is sporadic – certainly not enough to fill my schedule. New indie author enquirers can easily get comparative quotes so I’m definitely operating in a very competitive environment. With repeat indie clients, there’s an existing relationship based on trust, and satisfaction with my previous work. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m irreplaceable, but I have a value-based advantage when it comes to discussing increased prices.

I’m highly visible. I get a lot of offers to quote and I turn down a lot of work. If my set price isn’t acceptable to the client, I can walk away, confident that the slot in my schedule will be filled.

As I hope the two examples above show, the approaches we take can vary over time and depend on individual circumstances. There’s no one-size-fits-all response.

Some additional thoughts

Consider the impact: Taking a flat-refusal or a flat-increase approach might have unpalatable consequences. What will be the impact on your income if you or the client walk away? Can you afford it? If not, a gentler transition will be in order – one that includes negotiation, phasing in or out, and taking a longer-term view of one’s business goals.

Have a replacement strategy: Rate increases should be founded on a plan for how to replace what you might lose. I prefer to assume the worst – that if I increase the rate there’s a very real chance the client will walk. Being pessimistic means you prepare yourself well ahead via regular marketing that puts you top of mind (or top of Google) for the types of client who’ll pay what you want to earn. We must be visible to those clients who won’t quibble over the price we want to charge or be offered.

Be analytical: Flat refusals and flat increases should be based on a realistic assessments of the potential financial loss rather than on impulsive reactions to feeling undervalued. For some of us, at certain stages of our careers, it’s better to be underpaid and overwhelmed with work than overpaid but underwhelmed. We all want to be overpaid and overwhelmed but that doesn’t happen just because we decide that’s what we want!

Be realistic: Don’t underestimate your value, but don’t overestimate it either. Even if you think you put the oo into proofreader, your client might decide they can afford to lose you. That’s not to say you should buckle. Rather, you need to have a plan B – a replacement client who wants a bit of your oo!

Don’t be a sheep: You’re an independent business owner. Ultimately, you need to work out what to charge, what to accept, when to say yes or no, who to work for and how to be found. Your colleagues can’t do this for you, so they shouldn’t be the primary determiners of whether you take a phased approach or a flat one.

Don’t take it personally: If you lose a client because you can’t find a mutually acceptable price point, it’s not a slur on your character or your abilities. It’s just business. You have to look after yours, and your clients have to look after theirs. Sometimes a fit just can’t be found.

Managing rates is a journey
Increasing earnings isn’t about knee-jerk reactions. Rather, it’s a journey. Depending on your circumstances, you might handle things one way now, and another way further down the road.

Whether you buckle, negotiate, phase in/out, or make flat-out decisions will be based on your circumstances. There’s no one, true way to do it and there’s no shame in any of those choices as long as they’re done in relation to an analysis of your business needs and goals.

Louise Harnby is a fiction line editor, copyeditor and proofreader who specializes in supporting self-publishing authors. She is an Advanced Professional Member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP), a member of ACES, and an Author Member of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).